CHENNAI: When Gopi Manikandan was five years old, his mother used to sit with him on the floor with a chalk piece in hand and draw sceneries, animals, and Gods. Watching her draw, he too took a liking to art. She would often keep him engaged by making him copy her work. A 2D illustrator, Gopi decided early on that he would follow in her footsteps. “Whatever I know about artwork, it is because of my mother. She is the one who taught me how to draw,” he says.
Now, he is making waves on Instagram with his artworks. “I used to copy her drawing. I did not have an imagination of my own or a concept to draw back then,” says Gopi. But when the time came for him to finally create his work, and he went to his desk to draw something on his own, his mind went back to Gods and Hindu epics. “Born and brought up in a city that is the cultural capital of the state, Madurai, which is filled with divine stories, I picked up on those,” he shares.
Dedicating his entire life to art, Gopi soon shifted his focus to better his talent rather than concentrate on his academics. He says, “I deliberately scored less in my 10th boards, because, if I were to score above 400 then my family would have forced me to take up science group in higher secondary.”
Though he had made this decision, Gopi did not have a mentor to guide him. Unaware of the next step, his dreams stood still. “Wanting an answer to what next, I was advised by a relative to come to Chennai to pursue an animation degree,” he says.
After completing his undergraduation in 2019, he turned to Instagram to showcase his work. He was again at a crossroads, not knowing how powerful the platform was. “This is when I resorted to Hindu mythology and worked around it,” he says, adding that his target, when he started, was the people in Madurai, and appealing to the cultural side helped him gain his audience.
Gopi uploaded short narratives from the lives of Lord Krishna, Radha, and the festivities that happen in the city. This helped Gopi bag other projects like working on indexes of books, customised cartoon artwork for a US-based company. “I follow Chibi and Anime style of digital artwork, a Japanese practice, where the size of the head of a character is equivalent to its body,” he shares.
Despite not wanting to be a trending artist on social media, his creations on relatable topics, like the Rahman concert mishap or the Tamil film Kadaisi Vivasayi winning the National Award, garnered wide attention.
Soon he got the opportunity to work closely with the Corporation of Madurai in designing the mascot of Happy Streets Madurai. “Looking at my work on Instagram, the Corporation officials invited me to discuss. It took almost three weeks, edits, and improvisations later, Pandiya was created,” said Gopi. Bringing in Madurai’s pride in Jallikattu, the mascot is a bull.
Looking forward to more opportunities and constantly on the go to learn new skills and perfect his work, Gopi is eager to look at the next chapter of his life. Follow Gopi on Instagram @therikopi